


these places have their moments

by clarinetta



Category: The Beatles
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Sweet, featuring john and paul's patented Music As Communication strategy, i guess this is me writing, in my life, no angst for once
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-03-24 06:10:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13805085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clarinetta/pseuds/clarinetta
Summary: In my life, I love you more.





	these places have their moments

**Author's Note:**

> today I asked a friend (@pivoinesque on tumblr) for some of her favourite headcanons. The first one she supplied was "Paul knows In My Life is about him, but he won't ever say because it's his and his only." This little thing is based on the ensuing conversation, 100% credited and dedicated to Piv.

The music room feels different when Paul walks in this time.

He catches himself looking around, puzzled, searching for some instrument that wasn’t here last week. He fills his lungs with air that feels charged, ready to spark a flame. Nothing is out of place; even the crumpled lyric sheet he left on the piano bench is still there, but the sensation persists. Paul feels as though he has stepped into some sort of pocket of reality that only contains two people. Thoughts of the world outside dim and blur. Nothing has ever felt more real, more close to the bone, than this room in this specific time.

John leans over the edge of the piano to fish another lyric sheet from the floor. Paul watches him fold and unfold it, over and over. Each fold and unfold increases the uneasiness Paul already feels until he’s ready to snap. He opens his mouth to ask, “Guitar or piano?” but then John makes a decisive move toward the piano bench. Paul slides onto the bench next to John, and he realizes abruptly that John is the one creating the charge. John is shivering minutely, barely noticeable until he sets his cigarette in the ashtray and poises his fingers over the keys.

He hesitates, and Paul wants to make a comment to break the tension a bit. But he doesn’t. Time stretches fragile and thin. Then John begins to play a short, lovely riff. He goes over it a couple of times and then begins to sing. His voice is lilting, soft with a drifting melancholy. The lyrics remind Paul of home. His chest aches, though not unpleasantly.

The first stanza ends with a repeat of the opening riff. John’s fingers stumble over it, but he rights himself and pushes ahead. He sings the second verse even softer, but the light, muted sorrow from before is gone. Instead, John’s syllables feel heavy and significant in Paul’s chest, each word a ten stone weight, obvious, unquestionable, undeniable.

_But of all these friends and lovers, there is no one compares with you._

During their second trip to America, Paul read a book about the violent twisters that often swept through the middle of the country. The book described the way a tornado would pick up cars as though they were toys; sometimes the storm would drop them gently to the ground, but other times it would throw them several miles into the branches of a tree. The author characterized the inside of a tornado as a sort of vacuum, strong enough to suck the air out of a person’s lungs. Paul had thought to himself at the time that living in John’s orbit was sort of like living inside of one of those storms.

He remembers wondering what it would feel like to have your breath literally stolen from your body, and thinks now that it must feel something like this.

_Though I know I’ll never lose affection for people and things that went before,_   
_I know I’ll often stop and think about them–_   
_In my life, I love you more._

John repeats the last line in a cracking falsetto. The final note fades and he sets his hands modestly in his lap. If they were following the regular track of their sessions, this would be the moment where Paul would offer a word variant, a twist on the melody. But the moment is crystallizing, taking on weight and size and importance in Paul’s mind, and he knows that anything he said would shatter it irrevocably. It would be like smashing a gift on the ground, or editing your partner’s love letter.

Paul touches the keys without pressing down, brushing his fingers over the smooth ivory finish, marveling at the worlds they contained. He feels something akin to reverence, an almost cosmic gratitude for John and for the music that hooked their souls together and dragged them all over the world and brought them to this place. He mirrors John’s finger position, one octave higher, and reproduces the part of the melody that John played last.

_In my life, I love you more._


End file.
